Peter Lynds

[5hot6un]

Anyone remember this guy? He got a lot of press with his paper on time.

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/622019/files/ext-2003-042.pdf?version=1

I admit I did not read the whole paper. It went over my head pretty early. But I get what he is driving at even if I don't get what it means as a whole.

It's a seductive concept to me. Time does not exist in points. Any mathematical expression of time represents a period of time, not a point of time. But since I am not a scientist I don't know if this has a profound meaning or not. I think it does.

Is the same argument about space also true? There is no true "point" in space, only a region?

Both space and time are infinitely divisible. It's hard to argue with that.

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Although a bit differnt, you reminded me of one of Zeno's paradoxes which I always thought was trippy.

from Wikepedia:

Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a fourth, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.

The resulting sequence can be represented as:

( .... , 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1}

This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.

This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.

 

[5hot6un]

Although a bit differnt, you reminded me of one of Zeno's paradoxes which I always thought was trippy.

I remember this one too. I never understood what was paradoxical about it. Obviously at some point you have divided the space down to a scale smaller than Homer's foot. So the paradox is solved when put into the proper context of scale.

I did more digging about Lynds. Apparently he was just reiterating old ideas that are more philosophical than scientific.